I will discuss new experimental results and insights into the physics of cuprate high-temperature superconductors, providing an overarching framework for understanding these materials.
Motivated by transport measurements, I will consider an inhomogeneous Mott-like (de)localization model wherein exactly one hole per copper-oxygen unit is gradually delocalized with increasing doping and temperature. The model comprehensively captures pivotal unconventional experimental results, including the temperature and doping dependence of the pseudogap phenomenon, the strange-metal linear temperature dependence of the planar resistivity, and the doping dependence of the superfluid density. The simple model greatly demystifies the cuprate phase diagram, and points to a local superconducting pairing mechanism involving the (de)localized hole. The spatial inhomogeneity of the localization gap is thus expected to cause a distribution of superconducting gaps as well, leading to superconducting percolation. Accordingly, for several representative cuprates the superconducting diamagnetism, nonlinear conductivity, and paraconductivity exhibit an unusual temperature dependence above Tc that is captured by a simple percolation model. The results show that that intrinsic, universal gap inhomogeneity is highly relevant to understanding the properties of the cuprates.